Cliff rescue boy hangs on to gorse bush for an hour

A boy clung to a gorse bush for more than an hour after being stranded on a ledge on a cliff face.

Pierce Sunderland, 13, had already seen his friend Christopher Hamer, 12, fall 60ft on to rocks below, fracturing his wrist, elbow and ankle.

Three rescuers hacked through dense scrub with machetes before one abseiled down the cliff to stabilise Pierce. The teenager was then winched to safety by a coastguard helicopter.

The rescue operation, described by coastguards as "lengthy and tricky", began at 8pm on Wednesday after the boys, who were fishing, were cut off by a rising tide at Littleham Cove, near Exmouth, Devon.

The pair, who were on holiday, got halfway up the cliff before Christopher fell. He was taken by ambulance to Devon and Exeter Hospital. Pierce, from Accrington, Lancs, said: "I saw Chris go over the edge. I shouted to him to stay still. He was screaming for help. I was stuck on the cliff. I had got to a point which was thick with thorn bushes and I couldn't get through.

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"Chris was stuck on the rocks and the tide was coming in fast. He managed to scramble to safety and stayed there until the ambulance people arrived.

"Eventually I was winched up by helicopter. That was a bit scary because I was right over the sea."

Speaking from his hospital bed, Christopher, of Haslingden, Lancs, said: "I held on to a piece of grass and it came away. I went flying down and hit a rock. I got up the cliff using one arm and then collapsed."

Christopher's elder brother Paul, 17, had earlier swum to safety to raise the alarm. Andrew Rodger, coastguard station officer at Exmouth, said the undergrowth had been "absolutely impenetrable".

He said of Pierce: "If he hadn't dug his heels in and held on he would have fallen. We found him cold, frightened and shaken."

The boys were staying with their families at the nearby Devon Cliffs Holiday Park. Pierce's mother, Gail, 44, said the sight of her son being airlifted had been "horrendous". "I must have aged 10 years because I didn't know how he was or anything," she said.

Coastguards said it had been a particularly difficult manoeuvre for the helicopter crew. The winchman couldn't be lowered directly to Pierce because of overhanging trees. Instead he did a "cliff walk", which involved being lowered to the bottom of the cliff and being lifted up in a harness.